IOTA cryptocurrency is very different from any other cryptocurrency we’ve seen so far. Typically, a cryptocurrency stores all transactions on a public ledger and that ledger is distributed over the blockchain to numerous nodes for mining/hashing. Instead of a blockchain, IOTA cryptocurrency uses what they call ‘Tangle’, which is a Directed Acrylic Graph (DAG). You see already, complicated.
Basically, what the Tangle does not require dedicated nodes for miners to process transactions, since the sender is the miner… so to speak. Where on, say, bitcoin, you would have to wait for a miner to process the transaction and record it on the blockchain, Tangle makes you perform the proof-of-work algorithm thus verifying two past transactions on the spot. By doing so, IOTA cryptocurrency becomes fully decentralized and does not require any miners dedicated to processing transactions.